Wireless handsets are commonly used to receive and forward messages. There are a variety of different messages services. For example, Short Message Service (SMS) is a service available on most digital mobile phones that permits sending short messages, also known as text messages, between mobile phones, handheld devices, and even landline phones. SMS messages are sent via a store-and-forward mechanism to a Short Message Service Center (SMSC) which will attempt to send the message to the recipient. If the user is not reachable at a given moment, the SMSC will save the message. Later when the user is reachable the SMSC will again attempt to deliver the message. Both Mobile Terminated (MT) and Mobile Originated (MO) operations are supported.
Another messaging service is referred to as Enhanced Messaging Service (EMS). EMS is an application-level extension to SMS for mobile phones available on GSM, TDMA, and CDMA networks. An EMS enabled mobile phone can send and receive messages that have special text formatting (such as bold or italic), animations, pictures, icons, sound effect and special ring tones. EMS messages that are sent to devices that do not support EMS will be displayed as SMS transmissions.
Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS) is an evolutionary extension of SMS, and is a standard that allows sending messages that include multimedia objects (images, audio, video, rich text, etc.). The initial submission by an MMS client to the home MMS Center (MMSC) is accomplished using HTTP with specialized commands and encodings, which are defined by the Open Mobile Alliance.
After a message is received in the Inbox of the recipient's wireless handset, the recipient has the option to forward the message. Forwarding the received message is performed by selecting the single message and then forwarding the message to another recipient. When there a multiple messages to forward to one or more recipients, the process of forwarding each message is time consuming and frustrating because when forwarding the messages, the user must navigate a variety of different screens for each message that is being sent.
Additionally, there are different types of pricing plans associated with the sending and receiving of messages. For example, some pricing plans for mobile phone subscribers permit the user to send and receive messages at little or no cost. Mobile subscribers that subscribe to these no-cost messaging plans, rely on messages rather than voice calls. Nevertheless, the ability to forward multiple messages is burdensome because the process of forwarding multiple messages consumes so much time.